Wheat Beer Split Batch Tastings

I had originally planned to do separate tastings of the two beers that came out of my wheat beer split batch but life has gotten in the way recently and after a few attempts to write about each in half asleep states that ended with half legible notes I decided to use a day off to taste each and get a full description down.

Pink Dream Hibiscus Wit:
Appearance - Medium red in color with great clarity, probably the best I've had in a beer without finings. The head is the palest shade of pink, just off white, and has decent retention for a sour but fades to a small ring after a few minutes. More red than the pink I was aiming for but part of that is the base beers darkness and it's still a really pretty beer. Redder and clearer than the picture above would indicate.

Smell - Fruit (cherry, lychee, mixed berries) with some lower floral character. Light toasty and caramel malt in the presence.

Taste - Moderate tartness washes into sweet raspberry and passionfruit juice character that finishes with just enough sourness to balance the sweetness. Not noticeably salty but with a slight lingering note that might be the sodium.

Mouthfeel - Low to moderate body and carbonation, not as carbonated as I would like. The sweetness could probably be cut by more carbonation but it's not offensive.

Overall - A refreshing beer with no off flavors and plenty of fruitiness but not quite as sour or salty as I would like from a gose. The Lychee and Passionfruit extracts came across extremely strong and artificial in the first few pours but haven't been noticeable in the mix since. Were I to label the beer as having those elements I would need to use more, but with the hibiscus as the focus the subtle fruit approach worked. If I were to brew this again I would probably up the salt by 50-100% and give the lacto another day. I would also like to use a more subtle base (no caravienne) to cut some of the sweetness.



Green Spree Hoppy American Wheat:
Appearance - Deep coppery gold. Moderately cloudy, though some pours are fairly clear. Changing CO2 tanks and re-carbonating seems to have shaken up some hops. White head is small but steady with lots of lacing and small bubbles.

Smell - Green apple, pine, and lime lead the aroma with caramel and toasted malt.

Taste - Leads with citrus and apple that lead to a pine needle, citrus peel, and sweet caramel sugary middle before finishing with peach, pine, and a strange mix of lingering bitterness and sweetness.

Mouthfeel - Medium heavy in body and medium low in carbonation. Could use more carbonation and a lighter body but works okay as is.

Overall - This one doesn't quite work. While each of the elements seem to have given what I had looked for the blend just doesn't come together as well as I anticipated, with the sweetness of the malt and the strong apple and pine characters seeming to drown out the other elements. I can see why this base would work better with more citrus and tropical character of Fortunate Islands. With some time the hop flavors have harmonized some with the citrus coming more into focus but the sweetness of the malt and orchard fruit of the yeast still leave it a little candy like and strange. Not a bad beer but one that I won't brew again without significant adjustments.

Wheat Beer Split Batch (Green Spree Hoppy Wheat and Pink Dream Fruited Gose)

I love doing split batches when I homebrew. It allows me to double (or more than double) the number of beers I'm able to create with almost no increase in effort or time. Another proponent of splitting batches is Michael Tonsmeire who spoke about this very topic on the Experimental Brew's Brew Files podcast. This was perfect timing given that I was making a similar split batch (1/2 hoppy, 1/2 sour) and using the grain bill from one of Mike's recipes (Fortunate Islands) to do it.

Green Spree is inspired by both Mike/Modern Time's Fortunate Islands recipe and Mike's business partner Scott Janish's flavor descriptors for El Dorado hops as tasting like "Green Spree" candy. To up the green (in my mind this means sour apple but also lime, grass, and pine) character I added Warrior (which I found to have pine, grass and lime) and Centennial (resinous and citrusy) hops to the bill. The goal for this recipe is to sit somewhere between the light-to-moderate bitterness and hop character of my Pilsner and the heavily hopped West Coast NEIPA I have on tap, while still giving a chance to explore some new hops that I've been holding onto for a long time.

Pink Dream is a take on the classic Leipziger style featuring salt and a lactobacillus driven sourness but with the twist of orange peel instead of coriander plus an increased sweetness and darker color from the Caravienne malt. I also plan to add a hibiscus tea and possibly lychee or passionfruit to the beer to up the fruitiness and quenchability. The gose formulation (especially in terms of salt levels) and hibiscus addition (in terms of dosing and method) were inspired by Mike's Gose and Hibiscus Wit.

Not surprisingly the two beers appeared very different in the fermenters with the Green Spree half being hazier and having a more vigorous krausen while the Pink Dream half had little foaming even during the peak of fermentation and was much clearer and looked darker due to this.

Green Spree (Hoppy Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.053
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 85%
Expected FG: 1.012
Actual FG: 1.015

12/18/17
Added dry hops to Green Spree. Gravity down to 1.015 (7.5 Plato refractometer reading). Tastes fairly sweet but also moderately hoppy and tasty.

12/22/17
Transferred to 3 gallon keg. Tasting hoppy but a bit grassier and harsher than expected.


Pink Dream (Gose Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.042
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 70%
Expected FG: 1.013
Actual FG: 1.010

I pulled off 3 gallons for this half just after the combined wort hit a boil. This was then cooled to 100F and Lactobacillus Delbrueckii was added. Prior to pitching the Lacto I pre-acidified the wort with 3 tablespoons of 10% phosphoric acid in hopes to minimize the protein denaturing. After 12 hours I pitched a GoodBelly Straightshot due to concerns with the Lacto Del's souring capacity. 24 hours later I pitched a pack of S-04. I left my pH meter in Maryland so I had to just use taste of the sour wort and other people's experience to determine timing.

12/18/17
Pink Dream half down to 1.010 (5 Plato refractometer reading). Moderately sour with a noticeable but not overwhelming saltiness and some sweetness.

1/2/18
Added hibiscus by adding 1.5 cups of nearly boiling water to 1 oz. hibiscus poured into carboy. 1/2 oz each Amoretti Lychee Compound and Passionfruit Swirl added to keg with the beer then racked on top. Has good color, strong fruitiness, but it comes off slightly artificial. Hopefully the first pour just had more of the extracts than the rest of the batch and with some time the flavor will meld more.

1/16/18
Brought a swing top bottle of this to a San Francisco Homebrewers Guild meeting. Mostly positive response with several noting low salt levels (intended but below style requirements) and a mixed response to the hibiscus levels (some saying too high, others thinking it was a subtle enough touch to not overpower the beer).

Westward On (West Coast NEIPA)

NEIPA has taken the brewing world by storm. It's all at once loved, reviled, overrated, misunderstood, poorly made, perfected, singular, and widely varying. The main rules for making an NEIPA are: it has to be hazy and it has to be hoppy. There are some secondary characteristics including fruity hops, thick mouthfeel, and sweetness/less IBUs than a traditional IPA that are generally, but not always, desired. There are also a wide range of approaches to all of these characteristics

After moving to the West Coast I was strongly considering brewing a classic West Coast style IPA: bitter, dry, aggressive, piney, dank, citrusy. As I started making the grain and hop bill for this recipe I realized I could have a lot of those things but still take the best of NEIPA (less bitterness, less caramel malt, more body) and make a beer that I would truly want to drink.

Another part of my direction in brewing this IPA (and a few other hoppy beers I have planned) is the abundance of hops I have accumulated that made it to San Francisco with me. Over the years I have bought pounds of hops at various times and rarely finished a full bag. For this beer I decided to use the last 1/2 oz of an old bag of Amarillo, and decent amounts of Citra and Nugget that I had bought full pounds of in the past couple years.

A large portion of my hop collection also came from a mix of 2 oz 2015 hop packs from Yakima Valley Hops as a prize for my win in the DC Homebrewers BBQ competition (maybe not surprisingly with an NEIPA). Since then I have only brewed a small handful of hoppy beers, and have not ventured into the world of many of these hops, so I decided to include Comet in this recipe.

With these things in mind I created and brewed my first West Coast IPA (West Coast in brewing location if not style) and I'm really excited about it. Based on recent research by Scott I opted to go light on the oats, moderately heavy on the carafoam, fairly high on the calcium chloride, and high on the mash temperature with just a touch of caramel malt and sulfate to show some classic IPA character. For bonus points I named the beer after a lyric from a Bay Area band.

Westward On IPA Recipe
Expect OG: 1.061
Actual OG: 1.064
Estimated Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficiency: 79%
Expected FG: 1.014
Actual FG: 1.013
Apparent Attenuation: 79%
ABV: 6.7%

 

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Bright golden color with moderate haze. Voluminous white head that sticks around for a while and leaves pretty lacing all the way down the glass. A pretty photogenic beer that makes me crave a sip immediately. Probably somewhere between West Coast and NEIPA in terms of haze and color, certainly not milkshake-y but only moderately translucent. Has gotten clearer with time in the cold chest freezer but probably won't get much clearer than this.

Smell: Grapefruit, candied orange peel, Christmas tree pine, fall foliage, light touches of tropical/papaya and apricot yielding a mostly classic IPA hop character. There's some slight malt with caramel/toast mixing in with the leaf character. Not as fruit forward and tropical as I like but a pleasant mix that smells like an IPA.

Taste/Mouthfeel: This one goes down easy with just some light citrus up front followed by a lot of pine, papaya, and orange peel that lingers into a fairly dry and strongly bitter finish that draws me back for more. The carbonation level feels much lower than I expected for the 15 PSI it has been sitting at and the body feels full but not as creamy as an NEIPA and with a dry but refreshing finish. There's both a little bit of a weird onion character and some astringency in the mix but not enough of either to ruin the beer in anyway.

Overall: Sometimes I have a hard time determining whether my beers are good or not. This is especially true of IPAs and this one certainly falls in that category. The beer looks great and I have found myself easily downing a pint (or more) while trying to determine how I feel about it. I think it's probably a pretty solid IPA that just doesn't hit the high notes of my favorite NEIPAs or my favorite hoppy beers in general. That said, it does seem to do a pretty solid job of straddling the line between East Coast and West Coast IPAs with plenty of bitterness but also some haze and body. This yeast blend, and other features of this beer, may not be ideal for really bringing out the sweet and tropical characters I am looking for but they turned out a solid IPA.

 

12/11/17 Brew day notes: Did not hit the high mash temperature I was going for, as I forgot to correct the calculator's strike temp for my system (I always hit ~5 degrees less than expected) and only mashed in at 154. I did a fairly thin mash and a hybrid fly sparge.

1/4 oz. Columbus hops were added during the sparge, with 1/2 oz. Amarillo added 30 minutes after the boil, 1 oz. Nugget added 15 minutes later, 10 minutes later I turned off the electric stove and added the Citra and left on the same burner for 5 minutes at a near boil. Whirlpool hops were added in several additions in the middle of chilling, from around 200 F to around 160 F.

Chilling in multiple ice baths for 3 hours was only able to bring temperature down to 75. Pitched 800mL starter of my current "Inglés" yeast blend and an old, but not yet expired, pack of Nottingham dry yeast.

12 hours later the beer is fermenting heavily and airlock was replaced with a blowoff tube. Surprisingly not a ton of hop aromas coming off. Beer temp down to 69 F.




12/18/17
Added dry hops. Gravity down to 1.013 (7.5 plato refractometer reading). Smells a bit solventy and harsh but taste is more of a classic Pale Ale/IPA piney hoppiness.

12/22/17
Racked to 5 gallon keg with 2 more ounces of Citra and my stainless steel filter over the out tube. Less volume than I planned (noticeably less than 5 gallons) given the 5.5 gallon recipe size and relative volume in the fermenter but a decent amount was lost to trub and hops as expected. Tastes strongly hoppy but the balance isn't quite right. Hopefully a little time on the keg hops will help.

1/5/18

Tasting notes above.